One Man's Flip Is Another Man's Flopby Peter Kurthwww.dissidentvoice.org
March 23, 2004

Back
up, America! Rewind that film! Your columnist has some flip-flopping to do.

You heard me – I’m a
flip-flopper. Despite all you’ve been told by the White House, the major
media, Ann Coulter and the Ouija board, it takes a big man to flip-flop and
I’m going to be the first one on the block to do it.

I prefer the term
“flip-flop” to “waffle,” because “waffling” makes it sound like I haven’t
made up my mind, and I have. I’m flip-flopping absolutely. I’m turning 180
degrees. I’m going the whole nine yards, even though no one has yet figured
out what those nine yards refer to. You can look it up.

What I’m flip-flopping
about is Mel Gibson. Yes, Mel Gibson, a man I wrote off two weeks ago in
this column as “a shameless and repulsive movie star.” He may still be a
shameless and repulsive movie star, but from now on he’s got my vote. Why?
Because Mel Gibson has “doubts” about George W. Bush.

That’s right – Mel Gibson
has doubts about Bush. To be exact, he’s had doubts “of late” about Bush and
his filthy war in Iraq.

“It’s all to do with these
weapons of mass destruction that we can’t seem to find, and why did we go
over there?” says Mel, sounding confused. Never mind: Anyone who has doubts
about Bush is a hero to me. That’s a promise, and I won’t be flip-flopping
on it.

What I’m not flip-flopping
on is Mel’s Bible movie, whose name will never pass my lips again, not after
the hate mail I’ve received since I first brought it up. I had no idea that
Christian fanatics used words like that, but there you have it -- it’s like
12-year-old boys. If people knew how disgusting they are, they’d drown them
at birth. Or maybe you missed the story about the Smelly Sneaker Contest in
Montpelier on St. Patrick’s Day? You can look that up, too.

It’s easier for me to
flip-flop about Mel Gibson now that Americans, in a major flip-flop, have
knocked the Movie Whose Name Will Never Pass My Lips Again from its number
one position and replaced it with a remake of Dawn of the Dead. As a Reuters
news headline put it on Sunday, “Zombies Push Jesus from Top of North
American Box Office.”

I knew they would if I
waited long enough. Flip-flopping isn’t as hard as you think – all kinds of
people are doing it. Last week, voters in Spain flipped-flopped themselves
from “allies” to “appeasers.” The president of Poland flip-flopped by saying
that the Bush administration “deceived” him about those weapons of mass
destruction – “we were taken for a ride!” Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands
and Honduras are ready to flip-flop any minute, leaving only 28 flavors –
excuse me – partners in the Coalition of the Willing. Can it be long before
Tony Blair gets flip-flopped out of a job?

If you’re worried that Mel
Gibson has flip-flopped into a weak, whining, waffling weenie of the Satanic
Liberal Left -- don’t. According to reports, Mel’s “next foray into the
weighty world of religious film-making” will be about Hanukkah.

“The story that's always
fired my imagination is the Book of Maccabees,” Mel said last week in an
interview with Sean Hannity, the right-wing pundit and idiot du jour, whose
new book, Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and
Liberalism, in that order, is number one on The New York Times Bestseller
List, right ahead of Mel’s own Book of the Movie – that is, the Movie Whose
Name Will Never Pass My Lips Again.

According to the website
Comingsoon.com –- no, it’s not about the Rapture -- the Maccabees were
“Jewish guerilla fighters who led a successful rebellion against Greek
conquerors 165 years before Christ.” According to Mel, “The Maccabee family
stood up, and they made war, they stuck by their guns, and they came out
winning. It's like a Western." And according to a lot of newspapers, all
copying from the same press release, Mel’s taking flak already “from some
quarters of the Jewish church.”

“My answer would be,
'Thanks but no thanks,’” says Abe Foxman, executive director of the
Anti-Defamation League. Foxman knows a church when he sees one: “The last
thing we need is to convert Jewish history into a western. I would prefer to
leave [it] to Steven Spielberg.” He may have to flip-flop on that, because,
what with the ticket sales, the Book of the Movie, the soundtrack, pay-TV,
video, DVD and that bestselling line of “Passion Nail” pendants, Mel Gibson
stands to make something like $700 million on the Movie Whose Name – you
know the rest.

That’s a lot of nails, as
they say in Hollywood. And if they aren’t saying it now they will be soon,
because every single person who had a chance to be a part of Mel’s movie and
turned it down, from the highest studio head to the lowest body-waxer, has
been flip-flopping like crazy to feed at Mel’s trough. Right now, Mel Gibson
could say that the world is balanced on the back of a giant turtle and half
the population would flip-flop itself into believing it.

Meantime, science says
there’s a 67 percent chance that God exists. If you know your Darwin, that’s
a flip-flop, too. According to a new book, The Probability of God, the
Almighty’s existence can be demonstrated by Bayes’ Theorem, which starts
with the “prior probability” of a theory or hypothesis and, “by balancing
the various factors that could affect a situation,” comes up with a
“posterior probability” that it’s true or false. Either way, it’s a long
ticket line.